siderable disillusionment with both Mother Teresa and the Missionaries
of Charity.
Not more than two months later, Mother Teresa again became em-
broiled in controversy, this time of a political nature. This incident also
was the first time Church officials in India publicly criticized her, and
where she faced the most sustained opposition to her work and philoso-
phy. The situation was one of the few times in which Mother Teresa be-
came involved in a contentious row that had severe international
repercussions.MOTHER TERESA AND THE DALITS
On November 18, 1995, Mother Teresa held special prayers at the Sa-
cred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi. The occasion was to launch a two-
week fast and protest campaign demanding scheduled caste recognition
for Christian Dalits. Caste is an important part of Indian society; it is not
only a declaration of social status, it determines the course of a person’s
life. People born into the highest caste of Indian society were those with
property, money, education, and opportunities. The lowest level of Indian
society were the Dalits or “untouchables.”
In India alone, close to 160 million so-called Dalits, or known legally
as scheduled castes, were routinely discriminated against, denied access to
land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused, even
killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoyed
the state’s protection. The discrimination against and segregation of the
Dalits has been called India’s “hidden apartheid,” and entire villages in
many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste.
Although the practice of “untouchability” was abolished under India’s
constitution in 1950, social discrimination against a person or group by
reason of birth into a particular caste remains very much a part of rural
India. Untouchables may not cross the line dividing their part of the vil-
lage from that occupied by members of the higher castes. They may not
use the same wells, visit the same temples, drink from the same cups in tea
stalls, or lay claim to land that is legally theirs. Dalit children are fre-
quently made to sit in the back of classrooms, and Dalit women are fre-
quent victims of sexual abuse. Most Dalits continue to live in extreme
poverty, without land or opportunities for better employment or edu-
cation. With the exception of a minority who have benefited from India’s
policy of quotas in education and government jobs, Dalits are relegated to
the most menial of tasks, as manual scavengers, removers of human waste
and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers, and cobblers. Dalit
134 MOTHER TERESA